Rarely did you ever find a quest or even a conversational snippet telling you why certain creatures or certain people ought to be killed. Who's Mayong Mistmoore and why are there hundreds of dark elves hanging out in his castle near the wood elves? Beats me, but it's a good place to level. When you stop to think about it, the "plot" of EQ is that thousands of humans and humanoids burst forth from their cities one day and started killing every single thing they saw, without provocation or motive.
Now, that's not to say that WoW players will pick and choose (and turn down) quests and raids based upon whether they truly sympathize with the questgiver, but at least there's a token attempt to provide you with context for your actions. It's like the plot of an action movie, it doesn't have to be gold but at least it's there. If WoW is Fast Five, EQ was literally just titled ExplosionsGunsBoobsCars: Extended Cut.
I dunno man, some players, like me, prefered it that way. I felt it horribly annoying that I was limited by the quests within the WoW world. In fact, WoW made me hate questing in general, the idea that I had to do "Chores" for various NPCs, and feel "special about myself" like everyone else for doing it?
You played EQ, think of the quests they had, quests that involved you frequently running around the world, like the Stein of Moggok quest. That quest had meaning and substance, it truly felt like an adventure, and you know what? Barely any monsters had to be slain, I got to travel far distances, encounter other players on the way, not to mention use illusions to get through various parts, and in the end, what do I get? Barely any experience into my level, barely any money, but i get the Stein of Moggok. In the end, the Stein was sold to someone within a day, but you know what, the experience of me getting up from my daily grind in EQ and saying hey Imma go get me a Stein to sell, and then committing a good 5-8 hours to it, seems like a ton more fun than any kind of quest system presented in WoW or any other WoW clone.
Everquest questing system didn't require you to participate in it to have fun. It was an alternative method of gaining gear, money, faction, and sometimes experience (in early levels). And that's what I think quests should be, an alternative to the daily activities the players want to have, not the end all be all to a gaming experience. You bring up Aviaks; does your gaming experience in EverQuest get that much more enhanced that if you had some NPC strolling infront of the Karana Bridge telling you he's pissed off at the Aviaks so you have to go and kill 10 of them, then run back to him and turn in the quest? I dunno, I don't really see how much of an enhancement it is...
No it was not, it had no levels, it had no quests (besides delivering hearing aids to an old man outside Dearic), Once Trials of Obi-Wan and Mustafar and the NGE hit SWG, it became a themepark hybrid where you get all these items better than crafted items for rewards once completing the instance or quests. Although they slowly added a few themeparks like the Corellian Corvette, Black Sun bunker, Rebel & Imperial headquarters, and Geonosian cave after Jump to Lightspeed was released.
Also, I'm not ever giving another penny to SOE, I don't give a crap if it's the next biggest thing on the market, the so called "leaders of MMO industry" aren't such leaders.
I really hope that someone finally understands that people are tired of theme parks
Really? Or is it just a set of gamers that are tired of theme parks? How about all the people who hate logging in and wandering around, thinking "what the heck do I do"?
i think that it's not that people are sick of themeparks, just that there are (more than) enough of them to the point that any more of them are kinda trying to squeeze in on a very limited space.
howmany great sandboxes are there? 3? (eve, perpetuum, darkfall?)
RIP Ribbitribbitt you are missed, kid.
Currently Playing EVE, ESO
Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and not clothed.
I don't understand why so much people trash SOE honestly, maybe because i never played SWG, i don't know what i was playing at that time, something else, i recall very well that when i heard about SWG and understood this was the game i should play NGE hit, so i never tryed it.
But Soe have made (their own group of people right) and designed themeparks with EQ, they have made one of the greatest sandbox as it seam. Sure they fucked up, but it was their game after all, nothing even remotly close to the way EA behave with mmos, they buy weak but talented companies found the projects they are interested in and let them crash/die once said projects are off, and they are so fucked they can't maintain talented companies in healthy state if they even try which i suspect they don't. EA really don't care about neither game or companies, they are pure marketing freaks, apart from the EA sport sector, this company is a snake nest really. Maybe Bioware will proove me wrong but for now Ea is closer to my picture for sure. Soe at least have made the games they fucked up. NCsoft also have made some nice crap, personally i think l2 is the worth mmo ever, but they made it afterall.
Also and that was my point here. Soe made a sandbox at that time because the market was into a similar situation as it is now. It was stagnating, with a large portion of old gamers needing a more complex experience and asking for sandbox like gameplay. SO they did that really for those remembering that era, it was that. Now they didn't anticipate this huge venue of gamers with easy internet and speed access. Blizzard, did and advertised everywhere, someone was knowing there what to do. No other mmo have ever made such advertising campaign. So yes it was really bad luck for the sandbox, and they made it worth with NGE really, if they hadden't, SWG would maybe be like Eve today or something close when it come to reputation. Greediness don't pay off all the time really.
The market is now similar; a lot of the new gamers from the Wow generation need a more complexe experience now, its really not strange Soe want to try again, really nothing strange to me. The only stuff that could create problem is the potential facebook mania, as it look very similar to the Wow boom. But apart from that there is a lot of gamers in need of good sandbox, a good mmoRPG anyway, that is for sure. And when you look back themepark was a response to the anti social sandbox pking heaven. They wanted to make mmo for the role players, that was all themepark was about. From this perspective, it was a total failure, themepark totally killed rping. Sandbox today, at least for me are a lot more prone to give a better rpg experience. A lot of people will confirm you that they get lot more vivid memories from their sandbox than their themeparks.
I would have to theorize here and say that SOE plans to do a sci-fi sandbox MMO considering there is no other sci-fi titles on their catalog of games now since SWG is done, of course we all know about EQ3 and has nothing to do with this secret MMO , going with what $medster said with the SWG dev team being pulled to work on this "MMO" you would have to kinda put things together from there.
They're going to have to prove to me that they even understand what a Sandbox game is.
SWG was a hybrid from the start, too much "leveling" like game play to be a true Sandbox. But it did have lots of Sandbox elements, and lots of other good ideas too.
Sooooo, Darkfall isn't a sandbox? It has leveling too, its just in skills as opposed to classes. Come to think of it, that is what SWG had at the outset too. Granted, SWG's skills were organized into "professions", so their skill progression had a bit more structure than DFO, you could still change out skills fairly easily, meaning you weren't ever "locked" into a specific progression path. The only thing SWG had that could be remotely considered non-sandbox was consensual PvP, instead of FFA PvP. I put this more into the category of carebear vs. hardcore instead of themepark vs. sandbox. IMO, there is no true sandbox or themepark game, just games that lean heavily to one side or the other, and I feel that SWG leaned very heavily on the sandbox side.
Actually, I went back to it after I just got fed up with UO's changes, but the NGE had hit. I didn't stay long. Had they fixed what they started with, and added from there, I think they'd still be doing fairly well today.
Agreed, they didn't need to revamp, just retool a bit.
Darkfall is a WOW clone with open PVP full of gankers and griefers.
Comments
I dunno man, some players, like me, prefered it that way. I felt it horribly annoying that I was limited by the quests within the WoW world. In fact, WoW made me hate questing in general, the idea that I had to do "Chores" for various NPCs, and feel "special about myself" like everyone else for doing it?
You played EQ, think of the quests they had, quests that involved you frequently running around the world, like the Stein of Moggok quest. That quest had meaning and substance, it truly felt like an adventure, and you know what? Barely any monsters had to be slain, I got to travel far distances, encounter other players on the way, not to mention use illusions to get through various parts, and in the end, what do I get? Barely any experience into my level, barely any money, but i get the Stein of Moggok. In the end, the Stein was sold to someone within a day, but you know what, the experience of me getting up from my daily grind in EQ and saying hey Imma go get me a Stein to sell, and then committing a good 5-8 hours to it, seems like a ton more fun than any kind of quest system presented in WoW or any other WoW clone.
Everquest questing system didn't require you to participate in it to have fun. It was an alternative method of gaining gear, money, faction, and sometimes experience (in early levels). And that's what I think quests should be, an alternative to the daily activities the players want to have, not the end all be all to a gaming experience. You bring up Aviaks; does your gaming experience in EverQuest get that much more enhanced that if you had some NPC strolling infront of the Karana Bridge telling you he's pissed off at the Aviaks so you have to go and kill 10 of them, then run back to him and turn in the quest? I dunno, I don't really see how much of an enhancement it is...
Also, I'm not ever giving another penny to SOE, I don't give a crap if it's the next biggest thing on the market, the so called "leaders of MMO industry" aren't such leaders.
i think that it's not that people are sick of themeparks, just that there are (more than) enough of them to the point that any more of them are kinda trying to squeeze in on a very limited space.
howmany great sandboxes are there? 3? (eve, perpetuum, darkfall?)
RIP Ribbitribbitt you are missed, kid.
Currently Playing EVE, ESO
Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and not clothed.
Dwight D Eisenhower
My optimism wears heavy boots and is loud.
Henry Rollins
I don't understand why so much people trash SOE honestly, maybe because i never played SWG, i don't know what i was playing at that time, something else, i recall very well that when i heard about SWG and understood this was the game i should play NGE hit, so i never tryed it.
But Soe have made (their own group of people right) and designed themeparks with EQ, they have made one of the greatest sandbox as it seam. Sure they fucked up, but it was their game after all, nothing even remotly close to the way EA behave with mmos, they buy weak but talented companies found the projects they are interested in and let them crash/die once said projects are off, and they are so fucked they can't maintain talented companies in healthy state if they even try which i suspect they don't. EA really don't care about neither game or companies, they are pure marketing freaks, apart from the EA sport sector, this company is a snake nest really. Maybe Bioware will proove me wrong but for now Ea is closer to my picture for sure. Soe at least have made the games they fucked up. NCsoft also have made some nice crap, personally i think l2 is the worth mmo ever, but they made it afterall.
Also and that was my point here. Soe made a sandbox at that time because the market was into a similar situation as it is now. It was stagnating, with a large portion of old gamers needing a more complex experience and asking for sandbox like gameplay. SO they did that really for those remembering that era, it was that. Now they didn't anticipate this huge venue of gamers with easy internet and speed access. Blizzard, did and advertised everywhere, someone was knowing there what to do. No other mmo have ever made such advertising campaign. So yes it was really bad luck for the sandbox, and they made it worth with NGE really, if they hadden't, SWG would maybe be like Eve today or something close when it come to reputation. Greediness don't pay off all the time really.
The market is now similar; a lot of the new gamers from the Wow generation need a more complexe experience now, its really not strange Soe want to try again, really nothing strange to me. The only stuff that could create problem is the potential facebook mania, as it look very similar to the Wow boom. But apart from that there is a lot of gamers in need of good sandbox, a good mmoRPG anyway, that is for sure. And when you look back themepark was a response to the anti social sandbox pking heaven. They wanted to make mmo for the role players, that was all themepark was about. From this perspective, it was a total failure, themepark totally killed rping. Sandbox today, at least for me are a lot more prone to give a better rpg experience. A lot of people will confirm you that they get lot more vivid memories from their sandbox than their themeparks.
I would have to theorize here and say that SOE plans to do a sci-fi sandbox MMO considering there is no other sci-fi titles on their catalog of games now since SWG is done, of course we all know about EQ3 and has nothing to do with this secret MMO , going with what $medster said with the SWG dev team being pulled to work on this "MMO" you would have to kinda put things together from there.
Darkfall is a WOW clone with open PVP full of gankers and griefers.